Letters to the Editor for Nov. 21, 2013

Star-Banner readers share their opinions on the Tea Party, worship and emergency responder's training among other issues.

By district rules

The recent Star-Banner article highlighting teacher negotiations was a bit misleading as to why negotiations have lingered.

One reason is the process itself. Each year the MEA asks to bargain the upcoming contract as soon as possible. MEA's entire negotiating team is in Marion County and can respond to just about any request to bargain — the district's hired chief negotiator comes from Orlando, is not a member of Marion County Public Schools, and has other court appearances to work around.

Teachers have expressed a desire to bargain afternoons, evenings and/or weekends, when bargaining unit members could observe. The district wants only to bargain during the normal work day so their attorney can return home timely.

With regard to the governor's money, we have asked for the district to restore one of the two experience steps and use the governor's allocation for the purpose for which it was intended — they bear no responsibility for playing catch up — and plan to use only the governor's money to enhance salaries, frozen since 2011-12.

So as far as compensation goes, the only one being compensated in a timely manner has been the hired attorney the district has felt compelled to use as their chief negotiator — a practice that used to be completed in-house.

Mark Avery

Ocala

God as therapist?

An important feature of the synagogues — and all churches — is that it offers a powerful way to deal with anxiety and distress, not because of what people believe but because of what they do when they pray. The "therapy" interrupts self-destructive thoughts — guilt, hopelessness, fear — and recognizes them as mistaken concepts, burdensome and unhealthy — not worthy of harboring. Depressed people must completely consider themselves from God's point of view: not as the insufficient, inadequate persons they feel themselves to be, but rather as loved, as relevant and as having purpose in life.

In temple, we are granted God's love for us, directly. It's as if the synagogue implicitly invites worshippers to treat the Almighty like an actual therapist. Prayer is understood as a back-and-forth conversation with God anyway — a daydream within which you talk with a wise, good fatherly friend, no matter the extent of the tragedy.

We overcome adversity and sorrow in the Lord's house.

Joel Rosenblum

The Villages

Tea Party plutocracy

The amount of wealth possessed by the top fraction of a percent is staggering. There are individuals more wealthy than entire countries. This level of wealth ceases to have any utilitarian value in maintaining a lifestyle; no individual can ever utilize this much wealth to purchase the most extravagant lifestyle imaginable.

But what this wealth does confer is power. The power to use government to mold society in ways that validate and promote the privilege that results from massive wealth, the power to control the economic life of a society in such a way as to validate and justify the privilege and power of the elite.

Super-rich fundamentalist Christians seek to impose a theocracy in place of a secular democracy. These extremist super rich seek to impose an Ayn Rand dystopia mated to a theocratic power structure to create a religiously justified plutocracy. Hence, the tea party, a fake populist movement that is really funded and controlled by these elite.

The fight for a society that provides real opportunity for those willing to work hard rather than consigning most people to a debt peonage and a subordinate and voiceless role is all about fighting against the use of massive wealth to control society and exploit people.

Bob Zannelli

Ocala

Words matter

The Star-Banner article on teacher contract negotiations printed in Sunday's paper was misleading.

The real question is: Why haven't we settled yet?

Let's forget about money for a moment. This is a "full book" year.

The district has introduced 100 language changes in 26 different sections.

The MEA has introduced only 22 language changes in 10 different sections. Some of the district's proposals, such as fragmenting pre-school preparation time, eliminating teacher 10-minute breaks, and taking away teacher workdays at the end of each nine-week period, are unacceptable.

The district has also presented language that, if approved, would make legal the very action that the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) just struck down — putting up to 130 substitute teachers in classrooms for the whole year.

While compensation needs to be addressed in Marion County, it is the language items the district has brought forward that threaten to drag out contract negotiations.

Marcy Mellucci

Ocala

Ready for anything

Being a retired law enforcement officer, I feel it is necessary to defend the sheriff's office over its combat readiness and respond to the letter " ‘Combat ready' for what?" in Sunday's paper. I would like to ask the writer several questions.

Have you ever had to subdue anyone in a violent domestic violence dispute?

Have you ever had to subdue a violent drunken driver?

Have you ever had to look down the barrel of a firearm?

Did you ever have to enter a building on fire or a car badly damaged with people in peril inside?

Did you ever have to pursue a felon on foot, not knowing what was around the next corner?

While in the police academy many years ago, I remember a lecture by an FBI agent about response time. A doctor has hours or minutes to make a life or death decision. A judge had days. But a police officer's decision in life or death situations is measured in seconds and in milliseconds.

Yes, these "combat ready" officers are training to be ready for all forms of confrontation, and for that I am truly thankful.